Lee Howey has criticised Terry Butcher’s ten-month spell in charge of Sunderland.
Speaking on the UnderTheCoshPodcast, Howey has claimed Butcher was a ‘terrible’ manager.
Terry Butcher is well known for his huge success as a player with Rangers and Ipswich Town, as well as earning 77 caps for the England national team over a ten-year period.
The former defender decided to go into management whilst still playing for Coventry City, before joining Sunderland in 1993 and re-registering himself as a player once again.
After joining the Black Cats in the February, Butcher avoided relegation but was sacked in December after a run of poor results.
Lee Howey had joined his boyhood club in the same year, but was far from impressed with the English footballing legend.
Speaking on the podcast, the 54-year-old said: “Terrible. It was terrible when I signed.
“To me, Terry Butcher was an absolute icon, a hero. I had watched him put foot through doors, I watched him nearly strangle Gary Speed. I watched him do so much but as a manager, he was awful.
“It was them and us. He seemed to alienate the likes of Gordon Armstrong and just got on people’s goats, to be honest. There was always arguments.
“At times, we would play bad and obviously Terry was player-manager and he would just it there and he wouldn’t say anything – then someone like Don (Goodman) would say, ‘Are you going to say anything?’ And then it would all kick off again.
“There was once we were playing Newcastle and it was absolutely lashing down, it should have been called off but it was live on TV. We had just come back from Scotland and he (Butcher) was missing, nobody had seen him. It was an hour before, 45 minutes before.
And then he turns up with his head shaved saying ‘no surrender’ and we had Irish lads from the Republic of Ireland. I knew what the connotations were. People thought he was joking.
“The first thing Butch does when we go out is get the ball and hoofs it out. We got beat 1-0 and it should have been nine.”
Terry Butcher ended his 60-game spell in charge of Sunderland with a 30.23 win percentage – claiming 13 victories in 43 games.
While his time on Wearside was particularly disappointing, he did statistically do better than a number of recent managers such as Steve Bruce (29.59%), Sam Allardyce (29.03%) and Paolo Di Canio (23.08%)
